lucidity
by pondglorious
Summary: set post- Savoureux. A quick one shot about Alana visiting Will in prison.


"Alana?" Will's voice came back to him in echos as her name bounced on the hollow hospital walls. She was about to walk away after an exhausting update on the case, the ones that had become depleting routine now. She had replaced her folding chair on the other side of the wall. The clack, clack of her heels stopped abruptly at the sound of her name, strangled on his lips. She was ten feet away, already arousing another wave of obscene shouts from the inmates in the adjoining cells. Will always winced at the harsh cacophony, but he admired the way she marched down the corridor with her head held high, never giving them the satisfaction of running or cowering away.

She came slowly back to him now, and something about the sound of her footsteps coming toward him instead of away from him made the constant panic in his heart subside just a bit. On the worst days, those footsteps and the knowledge that she believed in him were the only things that kept him going.

"What is it?" She said, looking at him through the glass and bars which separated them. He couldn't know she was gathering every ounce of strength she had not to show that she was being ripped apart at the seams every time she had to look at his sad eyes through a barrier of glass and metal.

His question seems silly now, but he chokes it out anyways: "Do you still regret leaving my house that night...even now?"

The inquiry sends a jolt running through her, but she can't name the nature of it. She merely smiles, that calm, professional smile that drives him crazy. Like he's just another patient. Like she's forcing herself to retain that mask of professionalism. Feigning her own brokenness. He knew she did that a lot; pretended to be strong for his benefit. He wished she didn't have to. He wanted to be better for her; he was too aware he'd been grumpy, rude, even hostile towards her for things that weren't her fault. Rage blinded him on most days, making it hard to see his luck at having someone who never faltered, never failed him.

Suddenly her wistful smile softens along with the warmth in her eyes, and something inside Will melts.

She answers his question with another question, a ridiculous one she already knows the answer to. But she needs to ask, even if he replies with something worlds away from reassurance. "How are you feeling?" Her smile might have faded from its facade of professionalism, but her voice hadn't slipped yet.

He snorted. "How are you feeling about all this, Dr. Bloom?" He gestures towards his cold and cramped cell, but his mocking smile fades when he notes the seriousness flickering to a scowl on her face. He answers honestly. "If I wasn't dreading the loss of numbness...I would feel exclusively numb."

His hands were clenched on the bars now, his palms sweaty as he dug his skin into their cold metal surface. He doesn't remember putting them there. A quiet, sad sigh slips from her mouth and before she knows what she's doing she reaches up a hand as if to rest it on his cheek, like she used to. The hand hangs there awkwardly, and he closes his eyes. He couldn't remember the last human contact he'd had. If you didn't count the guards and manhandling him each day, it was Hannibal, placing a wool blanket over his shoulders. He shivers at the thought.

She'd never dared to breach the physical void that now separated them before. Her small hand could fit easily through the bars, though it was strictly prohibited. There was no one else here but the greasy inmates anyways, and they wouldn't tell. He opens his eyes again and her hand is still lingering, as if it's frozen in that exact space of time. He thinks he'll fall apart if those fingers don't reach him. His cheek is already burning with the sensation of it.

He promises himself that when she does touch him, he'll savor it until he could draw a map of her palm by memory, using it as a source of strength when he wanted so desperately to give up. He wanted that precious contact, to feel her as if to gauge if she was real and not, his clarity in the chaos, his light in the darkness.

Hannibal had fit that criteria once. But he was a darkness in and of himself, undetected at that point. The epitome of red herrings when he claimed to be a source of lucidity. He had been the only one to wade the waters of Will's insanity while everyone else watched safely from the shore. But now Alana dove fully in, at the cost of drowning.

He knows she won't do it. Too damn self restrained. Abruptly, without even registering the action, he reaches his hand through the bars and grabs hers where it rested, raised and hesitant between them. Her previously pusillanimous fingers melded to his and for a moment they stayed like that, fingers entwined, hearts pounding and calculating every inch where they touched. He watches as the touch registers in her eyes, softening them, fighting back swelling tears. He found again, like he had on the night that he kissed her, that looking into her clear blue eyes wasn't scary or distracting- it was warm and soothing and felt entirely natural.

The still caress of her flesh was more therapeutic than any treatment he'd received in his life. He had forgotten what a this felt like; contact with no intention of harm, but gentle and reassuring. He was too acquainted to the rough hands of Chilton's guards who thrashed him around like he was a rag doll in this place. But hers were soft and delicate beneath his own, tender and caring.

His whole body slumped over with the impact of that touch, so dramatically different than what he'd become accustomed to in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and he leaned against the bars as if she had drained him empty.

The selfish and wounded part of her holds onto that grasp for an eternity; the rational one tears her hand away, no matter if it's also tearing something on the inside.

And so she left him bereft and deprived without that touch. She averts her eyes, and finally answers his question. "I regret I didn't see enough to save you sooner."

The next time he hears her heels clicking down the hall, he knows she was wrong. With every sound of her footsteps inching closer, she was saving him in the smallest and most vital of ways.


End file.
